After Redact's super rage-filled rant yesterday, I've decided to do a mini-series on DotA. This is meant to be aimed at new players, or people who are looking to do more than play an everyone-do-their-own-thing pub game. Before anyone starts saying, "OMG, you're so wrong, how can you say something like that - the pros all do it like this....." the point of this is to give you a starting point to build from, because the learning curve for games like this is so steep it's unlikely you'll go from noob to pro just from reading a few guides. However, if you feel that I am giving completely bad advice, please say so, give your reason, and I'll add it as a note. I am by no means a pro player either, so don't take my words as gospel - just try to think about some of the things I've talked about. Also, this isn't a guide for how to play certain heroes, if you want that, Google it. Feel free to add any advice in the comments!
OK, so one of the most important things I think people need to learn is the roles people play and how this fits into the bigger picture of the game. DotA2 breaks it down into these categories: support, initiator, ganker, carry and pusher. I'd also like to add tank and jungler. The important thing to remember is just because DotA2 says your hero is X doesn't mean you have to play it that way. Most heroes fall under multiple categories, and it all depends on how you build and play them.
Throughout the guide, I'll make reference to this
warding guide. If you don't have the time (or inclination) to read and memorise the entire thing, just refer to the sections I mention for the type of hero you want to play.
SUPPORT
Typically intelligence heroes fall into this category.
As the title says, they're the heroes that support the team. Because they are generally not item dependent heroes, they can spend their excess gold on the courier, observer wards and sentry wards. If you end up laning with a carry, you want to level the skills that will help you harass your opponents so that your carry can farm in peace, or level the skills that will help you get kills on your opponents. If possible, you want to let your carry get the killing blow, so they will get more gold (you will still get some gold for an assist).
Letting someone take the kill used to bug me to no end when I started playing, but I realise now how important it is (I'll explain in another post). Still, it is annoying when a player acts like they're entitled to the kill and complains if you get it - even you happened to get it because of a DoT.
As a support hero, your life is worth less than the carry's. If the enemies are chasing your carry, and you suicide in so your carry can escape, that is a
good deal. If your carry is farming well, then you might want to roam around and help gank the other lanes.
They don't really shine during games... they just support.
As for warding, you tend to want to know all the positions, but as a starting point, try to remember these:
1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 18.
At a minimum, you want to learn 1, 9 and 13 for early game.
INITIATOR
These are the heroes who will go in first to start a team fight. They will typically have something that allows their team to gain a huge advantage at the start of the fight like a mass disable, or something that causes chaos. Some of the strongest initiators in the game are Tidehunter, Faceless Void, Warlock and Enigma, just because of their ability to disable an entire team. Lich and Sand King can also be a good initiators because their ults can cause confusion as the other team must organise themselves to avoid the damage.
Charles says initiators are the best types of heroes to play for new players, because all you do is go in, do your thing and die, but I disagree. The initiators set the entire tone of the battle. They need to have really good judgement and map awareness in order to time the start of the battle correctly. If they go in too soon, their team might not be ready, and so the initiator jumps in without back up. Or they might misjudge the position of the enemy player, so they end up wasting their mass disable spell.
A good initiator can potentially turn the tide of the game, simply by helping their team kill the entire opposing team.
They shine the most in team battles and typically not until they have their ult and Blink Dagger.
If you are warding, try to remember these positions:
3, 5, 6, 8, 14, 15, 19, 22, 23, (all of the wards in the push section)
At a minimum, you want to remember 3 and 5 as there tend to be a lot of battles around mid, and any of the Rosh wards.
GANKER
These are the heroes who are suited to killing other heroes - because they have really strong nuke spells, have the ability to sneak up on someone and pick them off when they're low, or lots of disables. If ganking goes well, they tend to be overlevelled and overfarmed compared to the rest of the players. They are also good for keeping enemy heroes poor and at a low level.
They shine the most during early- to mid- game.
Gankers require map control, which means they do best when they ward, or have someone warding for them. They might also want to counter-ward the opponents' wards so they can move around undetected. Smoke of deceit also helps with that.
Wards to remember: And of the rune wards, as runes help with ganking. It might also be worth counter warding so that they don't see you coming - although at this level of play, it's unlikely that your opponents will be warding, but if they are warding, it'll probably be in the places marked with the DotA2 icon..
CARRY
Typically, agility heroes fall into this category.
Their job is to farm up good items and just be strong! I am horrible at playing carries, so this is probably the worst advice to be getting, but I'll try! Carry heroes are the ones that can get really powerful late in the game. They can do a lot of damage, the difference between carries and nukers is carries can sustain this damage. As they do so much damage, they can push towers and rax, as well as kill enemy players - so in team fights, it's important to stay alive so you can deal your damage! And if the fight is going pear-shaped, you are entitled to leave the rest of your team to die and run away. It is the carry who generally wins the game.
Carries need to understand when to fight, and when to back out.
There are two different kinds of carries - hard carries and soft carries. Technically, you can build any hero into a carry, but a soft carry is a hero who can carry if they farm well and stay a higher level than everyone else, but if they were to fight a hero of equal farm and equal level, they'd lose. This usually happens to caster heroes, and spells in DotA don't scale very well, their nuke might hit for 300 damage, but this isn't much at end game, when heroes have 2.5k+ HP. Hard carries tend to have fast attack and movement speed and/or spells to make them mobile which let them move in and out of battle and chase down low HP heroes.
Charles says: Don't worry about engaging. Just KS (kill steal) and farm. Always keep an eye out of KS opportunities.
They shine the most during end game.
They shouldn't be warding, they should be saving their gold for items and buybacks.
PUSHER
As the title suggests, the pusher is good at pushing lanes. This is helpful for the team because each tower down is at least 1000g for the team (200g split between 5 players + extra gold if a player kills a tower). And as the ultimate objective of the game is to destroy the other team's throne, they help achieve that goal.
Aggressive pushing early game also means the other team has to play defensively. They may not have as easy access to their jungle, and will have less towers to teleport to making it harder for them to get to fights that are far from their base. It also increases the map control of your team.
They shine the most during early- to mid-game - and while they are also good end game for pushing, the fact that opposing players will have farmed more items by then may counter their pushing power (e.g. Nature's Prophet's treants may be killed a lot faster by a farmed hero).
Wards to remember: All of the wards in the pushing section.
TANK
Typically strength heroes fall into this category.
Their job is to tank - to take as much incoming damage as possible. The benefit of having a tank is that your glass cannon (high damage, low HP) heroes will live longer to deal damage and hopefully kill heroes. I think Axe is the only hero that can force other heroes to attack him, but other bulky heroes may tank simply by being the first one to walk in. In DotA(1), Magnus and Centuar were some pretty tanky heroes, but they haven't been ported to DotA2 yet. Tanks are really a sub-type, and most of them also fall into the initiator category.
They shine during mid- to end-game, when they've bulked up.
Wards to remember: I don't think tanks should be warding, they should be tanking up! But if they were going to remember wards, probably the same as the initiator ones.
JUNGLER
These heroes are ones that can start the game farming the jungle. This has two benefits - they can farm unharassed by enemy heroes (sometimes - although a team that leaves the jungle to free farm isn't a good team), and they allow their team to have a second solo hero (who will get more exp from the lane). They may also come out of the jungle and help push a lane or gank.
The jungler needs to pay particular attention to the middle lane, and the lane next to their jungle, as they're susceptible to ganks from these two lanes. The jungler may also want to stack and pull neutrals (I'll explain that in another post) to help control how far their lane is pushed.
Depending on the type of hero, they shine during different parts of the game. Jungler is really only a sub-type and really only applies in the early game. Once they leave the jungle, their main type takes over (e.g. Enigma is a jungler, but once he farms up Blink Dagger, he becomes an initiator).
Wards to remember: 1, 9, 13, 16 (although you might not want to block the camp, depending on how fast you farm. I can't seem to farm fast enough to reach that camp, so blocking it might be OK for me).
If you are only going to remember two, remember 1 and 9 and just keep an eye on the lane nearest your jungle.
